This was it.
No more. I couldn’t keep putting her at risk. She deserves more than me.
So, after the hour is up, I dress into my clothes and reach into the pocket of my pants.
The small wooden carving sits in my palm, the shape of a crescent moon and a star. I’ve carried it with me every day since I left her on the docks. The moon reminds me of her, but I want her to have it now.
Saying goodbye the first time was hard, but this time it rips something out of me.
Placing the carving on her bedside stand, I tuck the sheets around her and pull the curtains closed, leaving her to sleep.
And then I walk out of her life forever. I take the sim from my phone and snap it in half, discarding the pieces in a nearby trash can. I didn’t have numbers saved to anything else so her, my brothers… it’s all gone.
There would be no contacting any of them again and no calls or texts from them.
I do what I was supposed to do when I made the deal, and I disappear like I never existed in the first place.
Chapter Eighteen
One month later…
“Shit,” I groan, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. It’s noon already, yet it feels like I’ve only just gone to sleep.
Mentally, physically, emotionally, I’m exhausted. I roll over in bed and get a face full of orange and black fluff, courtesy of Pumpkin’s butt, and sit up abruptly.
And that’s when my stomach rolls. Nausea churns wildly, and I’m on my feet, rushing to the bathroom and barely make it on time to throw up what little I have in me.
I must have eaten something bad. With a groan I land on my ass in the middle of my bathroom floor, the tiles cold and unforgiving but my stomach continues to churn, making it impossible to move right now.
Pumpkin chooses this moment to let himself into the room, leaping onto the vanity above my head as he meows loudly.
“I know,” I groan, “You’re hungry. Just give me a moment.”
He yowls again but I don’t move until my stomach stops flipping and flopping and then I carefully get up, still not feeling great, like I’d vomit at any moment. When I get to the kitchen, I make Pumpkin some food, the smell of it adding to the nausea and then stare down at the bags of shopping I left on the counter when I rolled in last night. I only managed to put away the perishables before I decided I was too tired, and it could wait.
But if I didn’t do it now, I wasn’t sure I’d ever do it. So, when I have the coffee on and have had a glass of water, I empty the contents onto the sides, sorting through it and putting it into piles so it’s easier to put away.
With everything that belongs in the kitchen away, I grab the bag for the bathroom and pause, staring at the bright pink packaging on top.
I’d picked up pads and tampons last night on autopilot, but I hadn’t thought it then…
I’m late.
I mentally do the math in my head and realize I’m over by about two weeks. I’d had my period about a week and a half before the hours I spent wrapped up in Kolt. It was a day I couldn’t forget, both the time during and the devastation after, so I remembered the dates and I am definitely late for my period.
Shaking my head, I laugh at myself. It’s probably just stress from college and work. Things have ramped up in the past couple weeks, I was throwing myself into my studies while also picking up extra shifts. To be honest I didn’t like being here alone. Not since Patrick – though he’s disappeared off the face of the earth,and then being left by Kolt after I gave something so special to him.
Had I expected him to stay for long? No of course not, but I hadn’t expected to wake up and find him not there. It stung to say the least and I haven’t been able to contact him since.
He did leave me a gift though. A little carved crescent moon and star that is still sitting on my bedside table where I left it. I stare at it often, remembering how he told me he liked to whittle. Did he make that for me?
I asked myself the question over and over but there was nothing to suggest he did. He could have bought it at some flea market and thought of me. Maybe it was a thank you for a good fuck. I had no company and no one to speak to other than my sister to go through these thoughts, so I often spiraled.
But imagine being in my shoes. I gave him my virginity. I gave him something sacred to me and then I woke up, still sticky between my legs, to an empty bed and a cold, quiet apartment. No note. No message. Just isolation.
So yeah, I spiral about it. And I’m pissed at him, pissed at myself. I never should have caved to my craving for him, should have just picked a nice boy from one of my classes and moved on with my life. Instead, I gave it to an older man, a dangerous man that appears and disappears like he’s some damn magician.
Jaded? Yes. And I’m not even sorry about that.
